50 Years of Visionary Glass
May 31 - Oct 31
The Sandwich Glass Museum is honored to host world renowned glass artist and visionary Josh Simpson back to the Museum after twenty years. With this exhibition curated by Melissa Brooks we are celebrating Simpson’s fifty auspicious years of working with glass. The history of glass art is brought into the present with this brilliant exhibit of mesmerizing artworks, suggesting the timelessness and infinity of our universe.
We look forward to hosting Simpson and his wife and astronaut Cady Coleman for a reception May 31st 5:30 - 7:30 PM which will include a presentation and book signings by both Simpson and Coleman.
“Glass is an alchemic blend of sand and metallic oxides combined with extraordinary, blinding heat. The result is a material that flows like honey. It moves gracefully and inexorably on its own in response to gravity and centripetal force. It possesses an inner light and transcendent radiant heat that makes it simultaneously the most fascinating and the most frustrating material for an artist to work with. I do everything I can to coax and shape it, while all it wants to do is drip on the floor.” -Josh Simpson
“For the past fifty years, glass artist Josh Simpson has merged his unique artistic vision with a lifetime of knowledge about glass technique and chemistry. The result is a vast body of work that ranges from imaginative worlds we can hold in the palm of our hands to dramatic sculptural pieces displayed in galleries and museums around the world. One might be tempted, when describing Josh Simpson’s long career, to use worlds like vision, brilliance, dedication and passion. And all of these would be perfectly appropriate. But when Josh himself is asked why he has stayed engaged in his art all this time, his answer is usually something like this: 'It’s because glassblowing is so incredibly hard to do, and also unbelievably fun.'” - Sue Reed, from the exhibition catalogue Josh Simpson, Fifty Years of Visionary Glass.
“As a glassmaker, Josh Simpson is a Renaissance man. Goblets, vases, sculptures, paperweights, [ planets ]…are all part of his repertoire. He designs his own equipment and formulates his own chemical compositions for the various types of glass he uses. He gives the impression that there is no trick, no technique, and no piece of equipment he could not invent or reproduce. Simpson is highly artistic, a consummate craftsperson, and a gifted designer. His art is visionary, yet democratic, and is about ideas as much as about human feeling.” – Tina Oldknow, Independent Curator of Modern Glass